Copyright The Oregonian
Last June, parents from Rose City Park Elementary wrote to leaders at Portland Public Schools to plead for a second teacher to be assigned to their school’s first grade Vietnamese dual language immersion classroom. “Continuing to remove full-time employees from Rose City Park shows a lack of support for Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion, and will result in the eventual failure of the program,” warned the letter, which was signed by the leaders of Hội Phụ Huynh, the nonprofit that supports Vietnamese programming districtwide. The class had 32 students planning to return, parents pointed out then, putting them just outside the school district’s “target class size” of between 16 and 31 students for first grade. Once a first grade classroom hits 32 students, district officials have said, it is high on the radar to receive an additional teacher, though that figure is not an “automatic trigger.” In this case, though, the pleas went unheeded. By the time the school year began, one family had left the program, leaving 31 students in the class, taught by a single teacher, for whom English is a second language. A point of frustration, parents told The Oregonian/OregonLive, is that the situation could have been avoided if the school district had allowed a waitlisted family to enter the program, which would have bumped their June number to 33 students, comfortably past the “target” class size threshold for first grade, and their September number to 32. Instead, the family interested in transferring to the program received a notice from the district on Sept. 16 that parents shared with the news outlet: “Now that the school year is underway, we would like to provide an update on your child’s transfer waitlist status. As of Sept. 15, there is no space available at your child’s requested school.” In a follow-up email sent on Oct. 1, Senior Director of Schools Raddy Lurie told Rose City Park parents that focus option programs close to new enrollment as of that date each year. Candice Grose, a spokesperson for the district, said via email that it is district practice not to allow schools to “add transfer students simply to qualify for additional staffing,” though that is not explicitly stated in administrative policy. Once district leaders have determined how many staff will be assigned to each school for the academic year, she said, “schools may accept transfers only if space exists within their approved staffing formula.” According to district documents, there are up to 52 slots per grade available in Rose City Park’s dual language Vietnamese program, one of only a handful of such programs nationwide, alongside others in Washington, California and Texas. Parents say that means it is clear that there was enough space for the waitlisted student to be admitted to the program. But Grose said that while the “total target enrollment for two first-grade sections at Rose City Park is 52, that figure represents a planning estimate, and not a guaranteed number.” The single stand class has touched off an ongoing full-court press to get the school district to add a second teacher, as Willamette Week detailed earlier this week. Parents and the sole teacher have publicly describing a classroom that has frequently descended into chaos, with students who are missing out on foundational English language skills in particular, since 50% of the coursework is supposed to be in English. “It’s really a struggle for (my daughter) and for me to deal with the program with only one teacher,” parent Hien Vu told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “She and I struggle every night with the homework. She’s got a lot of homework from the Vietnamese class. But I haven’t seen any work for the English class, at all.” Typically, the district hires a handful of educators for “enrollment rebalancing” in October, so more staff can be added to alleviate severely crowded classrooms once the churn of the first few weeks of the school year is over. This year, though, there are no more teachers left in that pool, Raddy Lurie, the senior director of schools in the Grant and Franklin high school clusters told a group of Rose City Park parents at a tense meeting last week, a recording of which was shared with the news outlet. “In past years, when the budget was better, there were more set aside FTE,” Lurie told the parents. “This year, there weren’t. At this time, the decision has not been made to add another educator to this building.” The district already had to add teachers to both Grant and Lincoln high schools at the start of the year when it became clear that enrollments there had far exceeded projections, while a handful of elementary schools, including Faubion and Laurelhurst, both K-8 schools, have successfully argued for an additional teacher, citing academic concerns or safety and security issues that could prompt legal action if left unaddressed. Students in dual language immersion classrooms districtwide often have two teachers — one who teaches primarily in English and the other who teaches in the world language — unless demand for the program is small enough that there is only a single classroom for that grade level. Without an English teacher as a partner, Rose City Park’s first grade Vietnamese immersion teacher, Chau Vo, told the school board that she had spent hours outside of her workday trying to translate science and health curriculum materials into Vietnamese so that it would be possible to teach her class. She is not the only one struggling, she told school board members. “In a crowded classroom, [students] are overwhelmed,” Vo said. “They’re competing for attention, support and space to grow. It is heartbreaking to watch students struggle simply because there are too many of them and not enough support.” One student in the class wound up transferring out to one of Rose City Park’s neighborhood, non-language classrooms because of the strain, though his parents have said they’d seriously consider returning to the program should a second teacher be added. The school’s principal, Sheryll Orbase, is new to the school this year. She has promised parents that in lieu of a second teacher, their classroom is receiving regular support from the school’s instructional coach, learning specialist, educational assistant and its climate specialist, who supports student behavior needs. The bulk of the students in the class are testing at or above grade level on core academic skills, she has told their families. But parents say that a revolving door of adults, however thoughtful and well-intentioned, is not a substitute for the steady presence of a classroom teacher. “Some of the families are thinking about leaving Portland Public Schools or the program,” said parent Caitlin Burkhart. “It’s a really great school, a very sweet community school. But I am feeling failed in a lot of ways at the moment.”
